Salt & Strawberries
by stars that fill polluted skies
Summary: She still tastes salt and strawberries on her chapped mouth, even after all those years.    LilyLysander.


_don't let that broken heart haunt you._

**prove you wrong | he is we**

"We're still young, Lils. We've got our entire lives ahead of us!" he screams as he dives off the edge of the cliff into the cerulean, Caribbean waters below, rising to the surface with his blonde hair mussed and his sculpted physique glistening in the hot sunshine.

She jumps, too, her red hair fanning out behind her in the salt-scented wind, and he's there waiting for her when she surfaces. He kisses her, laughing against her mouth as their calves tangle together as they tread water and tasting of salt and strawberries. She's happy, here on this island in the middle of the ocean, wasting away time with Lysander, her grins wide and the days endless.

And then they're met with harsh reality when they return to England. He's sick, too sick, and she can't help in any way and it just gets worse and worse and the Healers can't cure it and she's crying by his bedside until the horrible morning she wakes up with his limp hand still intertwined with hers and he doesn't.

**-:-**

"I'm sorry for your loss, Lils," he whispers as he kisses her forehead. His nose wrinkles at the overused phrase, but he can't think of what else to say to his dead best mate's girlfriend. Lily nods against his midnight blue suit—black was too _depressing, _for Merlin's sake—and he kisses her again before awkwardly pulling away from the hug. If it counts for anything, Scorpius had thought Lysander's 'romantic' trip to the Caribbean had been a bad idea from the start. And he was right, as per usual—his spontaneity had _killed _him, in the form of some strange, foreign disease that attacked him from the inside out.

"Shut up, Scorpius. It's your loss, too," Lily retorts, a fiery little spitfire with flaming red hair to match, even while grieving. Her eyes are filled with tears as she, on tip-toes, kisses Scorpius's cheek and releases him. The next moment, Lorcan's pulled her away and Scorpius is left staring after a grieving family that he'll never be part of, now that his link to them is gone, lying still and cold in a casket in the next room, wearing a tuxedo that he would've hated.

**-:-**

"You know, Lils, I never would've expected this from you," he says, his brilliant emerald eyes surveying her ragged form, reeking of firewhisky and some boy's cologne.Her expression goes from mocking and amused to pissed off and murderous in a moment's time.

"Don't fucking call me that, Albus," she hisses, her once-lively brown eyes shooting daggers at her older brother. Nobody's called her 'Lils' since the funeral, nobody since Scorpius. Hell, even before the funeral, it had only ever been Lys and Scorpius who'd been allowed.

He doesn't apologize, just _stares _at his wreck of a baby sister. He blames himself, really. He should've seen the signs, shouldn't have shunned her after Lysander's death. She was _so _damn closed off, though—he just wanted to give her what she wanted, which he thought was to go through the grieving process alone.

Obviously, he was very, very wrong, judging by her ripped tights and miniskirt and bare shoulders, her stench of cigarettes and alcohol. Lily was definitely not okay—and Albus blamed himself.

**-:-**

"Albus called, Lils. He said you're messed up. Said I should talk to you," he says to her one rainy October afternoon in a secluded corner of the coffee shop Molly's worked in since her fifth year. "What happened?" he asks, disappointment laced in his voice as he stares at her. She doesn't look anything like what she looked two years previously at Lys's funeral, where he'd last seen her.

Her flat brown eyes are sunken and her skin is waxy and pale. Her hair is loosely tied back into a ponytail, looking more brown than red, and traces of dark makeup linger on her face even after she's apparently scrubbed it clean. She's thin, too thin for it to be healthy. And Lorcan's scared of what sweet Lils has become, but more so scared for her. They're family, they always will be, and he hates, absolutely loathes, seeing her like this, like a corpse.

Lily doesn't know what to say because she doesn't know—or, she does, and she's too scared of saying it aloud. But, Lorcan knows. Lorcan knows that Lysander dying was what catapulted this all into action. And he can't fix it—he wishes he could, but he can't. He won't ever be able to.

**-:-**

"You're haunted, Lillian," he says slowly, his deep voice filling the library-like office. He's writing away at his clipboard. Beside the rhythmic tick-tock of the grandfather clock in the corner and the periodic interruptions of Dr. Foster's voice, the scratching of his pen on paper is the only noise. Lily doesn't speak because she doesn't want to. Not to some Muggle shrink that Albus, Lorcan, and Scorpius make her go to every weekend. He's put her on some anti-depression medication, but she Vanished it weeks ago. She doesn't need it; she isn't depressed.

"I'm not fucking haunted, _John,_" she replies scathingly, using the name he said he preferred her call him. The only thing stopping her from Apparating from the hospital is the Statute for Secrecy. She wouldn't dare jeopardize her world. Otherwise, she'd be gone.

"You're angry. Have you been practicing forgetting with Ginevra?" he asks, unfazed by yet another of her outbursts. She glances at the clock, her heart leaping at the fact that their session has only two more minutes.

"No, I haven't. And, to you, her name is Mrs. Potter—not Ginevra. I'm a patient, not a family friend. Goodbye, John," Lily hisses before grabbing her bag and promptly strutting out of the office.

In everybody's eyes but hers, she was most definitely not better.

**-:-**

"Let's go out tonight, Lils," he says casually at a weekly Scamander dinner. After three years of distance from the tightly-knit trio—plus Lily—Scorpius had finally been invited back for the weekly tradition. He's just finished his dessert of Luna's famous dirigible plum pie when he turns to Lily and asks her out, and her reaction is nothing less than completely and totally shocked. It's not like that wasn't exactly the reaction he expected because, trust me, it was. He just didn't care. He figured this sort of 'therapy' would work better than John Foster's.

She reluctantly agrees and a few hours later they're dancing far too closely under neon strobe lights at some club in Bristol, his firm hands on her hips and his mouth whispering poetic words that he must've stolen from Lysander into her ear—but she just doesn't care. She's drunk and lost in that happy place she's visited far too many times in the past year and she _doesn't care. _

Scorpius, cold, calculating Scorpius knows exactly what he's doing. He's getting her just drunk enough to have the truth spilling out from between her perfectly white, slightly crooked teeth. And he does exactly that, and later that night, he finds himself underneath the girlish pink duvet at her flat, her fingers prying at his clothes intrusively as he whispers to her in the darkness of the room.

"Lils, this isn't good for you. Lils, Lils, stop it. Those are my pants, knock it off," he hisses as he pushes away her hands from his zipper again. She laughs a manic sort of laugh that sends shivers down his spine screaming and he thinks she, his precious little Lily, might have really gone mad.

"Lily, I'm not fucking Lysander!" he screeches as he sits up and she stares at him, her eyes wide with a bit of fear and far too much sadness for a girl of only twenty-two. He realizes that he's done it, he's really pushed her over the edge and, without thinking, he streaks out of the flat. He doesn't want to be there for the meltdown.

**-:-**

"Don't you die on me, Lily!" he screams, his voice shaking and cracked, burning hot tears streaming down his cheeks and blurring his vision as he pulls Lily onto his lap by her blood-soaked arms, Apparating to St. Mungo's.

James calls their parents at half past two in the morning, his baby sister sleeping off her drug overdose in the next room under the watchful eyes of the Healers. He has dark circles under his eyes and his glasses are on the edge of his nose, but he doesn't dare leave. He wants to be there when she wakes up. He can't just leave her.

Ginny arrives within seconds of her eldest son's phone call, looking disheveled. Tears flood her eyes when she sees Lily, the deep cuts in her arms bandaged, peacefully sleeping. She sits by her daughter and patiently waits for her husband and second son.

Harry shows up nearly an hour later, and Lily still hasn't woken up. He showers her with kisses and praises James far too many times, but neither men care. Lily is alive and physically well. Those simple two facts are the only ones processing in any of their minds.

They all sleep beside each other, a magenta blanket provided by the staff wrapped around all three of them, a sort of comfort in the mess that is Lily's (first) suicide attempt.

**-:-**

"I'm haunted, aren't I?" she whispers to him, her fingertips tracing the curves and contours of his face, brushing across his high cheekbones, counting out each of his long, dark eyelashes. He laughs softly and kisses her; he tastes like salt and strawberries—an oddly comforting mixture. She's pressed up against the sharpened rocks of their little lagoon, the glistening onyx blades cutting into her bare back, but she ignores the dull pain. She has Lysander again and that's all that matters. Those precious hours are all that she cares about.

"Only if you're my little ghost," he replies quietly as his fingers trail down her pale ribcage beneath the blue waters, a smirk on his mouth forming. His half-dry blonde hair is mussed and golden in the light and she can't help but think he looks like a tanned angel, her angel. A fallen angel, but an angel nonetheless. _(Perhaps he's the devil, she thinks—he was beautiful, he was God's favorite, and then he fucked up. Perhaps he was the devil, and she was the fuck up.)_

But, it's different. They both know that. He's dead and she's halfway there. This isn't their lovely Caribbean fantasy, but it's as close as they'll ever get back.

He kisses her once again and she wakes up to the sound of that day's nurse coming in to take her vitals. She still tastes salt and strawberries on her chapped mouth.


End file.
